For a small firm of boatbuilders in North Wales, it’s the icing on the kayak.

Four thousand years ago, the native inhabitants of the Arctic, equipped only with sealskin and driftwood, invented the unsinkable one-man hunting boat. Now their descendants are buying glass-reinforced plastic kayaks from Anglesey, an island somewhat smaller and less icebound than Greenland — at least for now.

Folklore has always suggested an ability to sell refrigerators to Eskimos as the ultimate triumph of salesmanship. The Welsh have gone one better. Native Inuit Greenlanders didn’t invent the fridge because they didn’t need it. They did invent the brilliant technology of the kayak, but now they are importing it, just as the Scots now import bagpipes from Pakistan.

Nigel Dennis, director of Sea Kayaking UK and himself an accomplished paddler, has sold about 30 of his Welsh-made kayaks to customers in Greenland, some to native hunters and some to local promoters of sea kayaking as the latest must-try sport.

“There are a couple of hunters who have bought our boats for hunting seal,” Mr Dennis said.

“They may not have the time to build all-handcrafted boats so they are choosing our glass-fibre boats, which are more robust.”

Kayak means man’s boat or hunter’s boat. The man would be measured for it and make it to his own exact specification from seal skins sewn together by his wife.

Given that the Arctic is largely treeless, it would be constructed over a frame of driftwood. A sealskin apron round his body in the tiny cockpit would ensure that, if the kayak rolled over, it would easily right again without becoming waterlogged.

There was a reason for the design; for all their extreme hardiness, very few Inuit ever learnt to swim.

Welsh kayaks, although assumed to be perfectly safe, do not have that personal fitting; they are more M&S than Savile Row, coming in small, medium and large sizes.

But their purpose is different. They are designed for sea kayaking, an increasingly popular sport, rather than for hunting seal among the melting glaciers of the world’s largest island. As a result the craft sacrifice man-ouevrability for stability; they are claimed to be longer, steadier and more seaworthy.

They are fitted with a compass and a watertight compartment for sandwiches or other preprepared sustenance.

Sea kayakers don’t hunt seal, or anything else beyond their own adventure. Native Greenlanders, who have a considerable measure of home rule under Denmark, are allowed a carefully controlled amount of traditional hunting.

Ole Lindhardt, who runs a sea kayaking school for tourists in Greenland, has bought two Welsh kayaks. “They have the qualities that we want. Sea kayaking is becoming much more recreational in Greenland. It’s getting to be quite a popular sport here.”

The Welsh company also produces two and three-cockpit kayaks, which are the seagoing equivalent of the motorbike and sidecar, with room for the wife and child. But the Inuit were making the same thing many hundreds of years ago. This coals-to-Newcastle trade has not become two-way. There are as yet no reports of Greenlanders selling coracles to the Welsh.

Staying afloat

Paddling styles include sea kayaking, whitewater, racing and slalom

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